My media product, called Best Friends, was a short psychological horror film that used conventions from Roman Polanski's 1968 film Rosemary's Baby to explore themes of life/death and fantasy/reality. The opening scene replicated Rosemary's Baby's establishing shot of the apartment building to anchor the key location of an abandoned park. While adhering to horror conventions like mis-en-scene, the film also sought to subvert expectations by dressing both the protagonist and antagonist in black to create ambiguity about who was the villain. Non-diegetic sound, like a narrating voiceover throughout, challenged conventions by conveying additional information about characters' thoughts.

1. IN WHAT WAY DOES
YOUR MEDIA PRODUCT
USE, DEVELOP,OR
CHALLENGE FORMS
AND CONVENTIONS IN
REAL MEDIA PRODUCTS

2. In the opening of the first scene, my short film
replicates the works of Polanski to establish
conventions of horror. Rosemary’s Baby opens with
a panning establishing shot showing the apartment
block, where the film is set and Best Friends opens
with this same shot, this helps to anchor the key
location of the film, an abandoned park also
encoding the idea of isolation.

4. My media product was called Best Friends, a
short film that used the codes and conventions
of the psychological horror genre. My
influences came from Roman Polanski (1968)
Rosemary’s Baby through an exploration of the
binary opposition themes of life and death and
fantasy versus reality.

6. My short film uses the mise-en-scene to subvert from
the conventions of horror. The protagonist Rochelle
and the predominant male character Mr Malicious are
both dressed in black. Many connotations of black are
usually mysterious, evil, negativity and death. This
colour feature of mise-en-scene was encoded to create
ambiguity, and to create the idea that both Rochelle
and Mr Malicious could be the villain. The mise-en-
scene of the colour black alongside the actions of Mr
Malicious creates an emblem of death. The audience
can decode that Mr Malicious is not a living character.

7. Mise-en-scene was also used to conventions of
horror. In the scene of ‘Limbo/the middle world’
heavy white lighting was used to replicate the
effect of a middle world and a heaven location.
This is very similar to the works of Peter Jackson
in The Lovely Bones (2009). This was encoded to
represent the character Mr Malicious as
originating from a paranormal domicile.

8. I have re-enforced the theory of ‘repetition and
difference’ identified by Steve Neale, the non-diegetic
sound was used to challenge the conventions of real
media products. The use of a voice over narrating
throughout the film is not a typical convention of the
genre horror, although it is a useful device. It is used
to convey additional information such as the thoughts
and feelings of characters. My short film evidenced
this through a voice over of the protagonist Rochelle.